The Ice and Fire of #以太坊

A few days ago, I saw a set of data in the crypto media:
Ethereum’s smart contract deployment in Q4 2024 hit a record high,
and the number of transactions also broke records.
At first glance, it’s easy to draw a conclusion:
‍$ETH ETH is about to enter a bull run.
It even reminds people of the narrative repeatedly mentioned by #TomLee and #易理华 about the 2026 bull market—
as if everything is aligning.
But the question is:
Has the on-chain activity really returned to a bull market state?
So I systematically reviewed Ethereum’s core on-chain indicators, and the conclusion is only one sentence:
👉 Ethereum is experiencing a typical “Ice and Fire” situation.
🔥 The fiery side: activity hits new highs across the board
On the surface, the Ethereum ecosystem is indeed exceptionally prosperous:
Smart contract deployment scale: historic high
Number of transactions: historic high
Looking at these two indicators,
you might think Ethereum developers are racing,
applications are exploding,
and the ecosystem is accelerating.
But what truly determines ETH’s value capture ability,
is not the “quantity” of transactions,
but the “quality” of transactions.
❄️ The icy side: value capture still in a bear market range
When you switch your perspective to value-related indicators, the scene immediately changes:
Ethereum transaction fees: still in cyclical lows
ETH burn volume: sluggish, with very limited rebound
New validators / validation contracts: at cyclical lows
These indicators are highly consistent with ETH’s market price performance.
In other words:
The chain is busy, but not making much money.
🤔 Why does this disconnect occur?
This is not Ethereum “data falsification,”
but a paradigm shift at the architectural level.
There are three core reasons:
1️⃣ Upgrades have reduced Gas costs
From Dencun → Pectra → Fusaka,
Ethereum completed a qualitative upgrade around 2025:
Blob data availability launched
Block capacity and Gas limit increased
Execution efficiency greatly optimized
The result is:
Even with a surge in transaction volume, the network remains uncongested.
Recently, the average #Gas :
0.1–0.6 Gwei
Single transaction fee ≈ $0.17
In historical bull markets,
this number often reaches dozens of dollars.
2️⃣ Current transactions are “many but light”
The main drivers of increased transaction count now are:
Batch contract deployments
Stablecoin settlements
‍RWA-related operations
Wallet intent, account abstraction
The common point of these operations is:
Gas consumption is extremely low.
No longer the past scenarios like:
Multi-hop swaps
NFT minting
High-complexity DeFi operations
So what you see is:
Transactions are increasing, but total fees are not rising.
3️⃣ L2 has taken over the “most profitable” part
The reality today is:
High-frequency, complex interactions → L2
L1 only handles: final settlement + data publication
And blobs’ fees are kept extremely low.
The result is:
L2 is lively, but ETH itself isn’t “burning” much.
This is the root of “high activity, low burn.”
🧠 How should we understand the current Ethereum?
One sentence summary:
Ethereum has entered the “high-efficiency era,” but not the “high-value density era.”
This is not a bad thing; on the contrary—
Network scalability has significantly improved
Usage costs have greatly decreased
Public chain competitiveness has clearly increased
This is a healthier, more sustainable underlying structure.
But at the same time, it also means:
👉 Relying solely on the current activity level is not enough to push ETH into a new full bull market.
⏳ Final judgment
Today’s Ethereum is more like:
The underlying infrastructure is already in place
The ecosystem is slowly accumulating momentum
But “paying willingness applications” have not yet fully exploded
This is a period of buildup, not the main upward wave.
The real turning point,
still depends on:
Scaled real demand
Deep financialization of stablecoins / RWA
or the emergence of new high Gas-consuming applications
Until then,
Ethereum will be busy,
but not necessarily expensive.
This is the current “Ice and Fire” of ETH.